10 Things Your Business Website Needs

[emekaLv2: Member]

We will be outlining ten things your business website needs to drive more engagement and make more sales.
For a website, to be customer-friendly, there are many other elements besides how your website looks -- not to mention something that inspires them to actually do business with you. Get a customer friendly website Hosting here.

For you to do business effectively here are the nuts and bolts that every business website should have:

1. A clear description of who you are

Your website should be able to easily tell someone about what exactly you do and not the other way round that one needs to do investigative work to figure out what, exactly, it is that you do.

That means clearly stating your name and summing up your products or services right on the homepage, says John Zhuang, of Web-design and SEO-optimization firm Winning Interactive.

A clear description will attract the visitor's attention immediately within 2-3 seconds, and encourage them to stay on your website longer."

2. A simple, sensible Website address

Make it simple.

"Your domain name is like your brand. It should be easy for a user to spell or type into a Web browser or an e-mail address," says Ron Wright, the founder of business Web design and online marketing firm Accentix.

Domain with .com is usually recommended as users are conditioned to type that extension when they enter a Web address. For non-profits or

For non-profits or organizations, it is usually advisable to use .org domain for branding purposes, but also recommend having a .com version of the domain in case a user accidentally types the .com address."

Wright also suggests avoiding dashes (which can cause SEO headaches) and numbers (which can cause confusion for customers).

3. An easily-navigated website site map

Do not stress your visitors

Clear links to the most important pages, and a site map, are crucial for guiding visitors to the information they're looking for.
“Your navigation should be clearly laid out.
Use dropdowns in the navigation menu as this allows visitor to see the content under every heading from virtually any page. You want to make it very easy for your visitors to find what they are looking for, or what you want them to know," Wright suggests.

4. Easy-to-find contact information

Contact information is key in any website as this makes it easier for your customers to get in touch with you. You wouldn't want to lose a customer to a competitor just because you made it difficult for them to get in touch with you.

"Not every online visitor has the patience to click through every page on your website to find the contact information," says Zhuang.
It’s best to put contact information at the top left or top right corner of the home page.

It is also a good practice to include contact information in every page of the website in the footer or side bar or even in top right corner, which helps the visitors to find it more easily."

Various means of contacting you should also be included -- phone, e-mail, and a standard contact form, are all good options. Forbes also suggests including your address and even a link to your location in Google maps.

"One of the biggest mistakes business owners make is to force only one way to reach them," says Wright. "The point is to make it very easy for users to communicate with you on their terms."